Carl Elliott is Professor in the Center for Bioethics and the Departments of Pediatrics and Philosophy. A native South Carolinian, Elliott was educated at Davidson College in North Carolina and at Glasgow University in Scotland, where he received his PhD in philosophy. He received his MD from the Medical University of South Carolina. Prior to his appointment at the University of Minnesota in 1997 he was on the faculty of McGill University in Montreal. He has held postdoctoral or visiting appointments at the University of Chicago, East Carolina University, the University of Otago (New Zealand) and the University of Natal Medical School (now the Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine), the first medical school in South Africa for non-white students. In 2003-04 he was Visiting Associate Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he led a seminar on the social implications of bioethics.
Elliott's current work on the intersection of medicine and the market is supported by a grant from the National Library of Medicine.His scholarly interests include the ethics of enhancement technologies, research ethics, the philosophy of psychiatry, and the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Walker Percy. His articles have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The London Review of Books, The Believer, The American Prospect and Dissent. He is the author or editor of six books, including A Philosophical Disease: Bioethics, Culture and Identity (Routledge, 1999) and Better than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream (Norton, 2003.)
Books
Prozac as a Way of Life (editor, with Tod Chambers), University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
Better than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream (W.W. Norton, 2003.)
A Philosophical Disease: Bioethics, Culture and Identity, Routledge, 1999.
The Last Physician: Walker Percy and the Moral Life of Medicine, (editor, with John Lantos), Duke University Press, 1999.
Slow Cures and Bad Philosophers: Essays on Wittgenstein, Medicine and Bioethics, (editor), Duke University Press, 2003.
The Rules of Insanity: Moral Responsibility and the Mentally Ill Offender, State University of New York Press, 1996.
Selected Articles
Ethics for Sale: For-profit ethical review, coming to a clinical trial near you. (with Trudo Lemmens). Slate, December 13, 2005
When Ethicists Have Conflicts of Interest (PDF), Dissent, Fall 2005
Should journals publish industry-funded bioethics articles? (PDF) The Lancet, July 7, 2005.
Adventure! Comedy! Tragedy! Robots! How bioethicists learned to stop worrying and embrace their inner cyborgs (PDF), Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, Volume II, Number 1 (2005).
Pharma Goes to the Laundry: Public Relations and the Business of Medical Education (PDF), Hastings Center Report, September-October 2004.
A World of Our Own Making: Medical Enhancement and the Pursuit of Happiness, Dissent, Summer 2004.
Six Problems with Pharma-Funded Bioethics (PDF), Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 35, 2004.
The Cellular Apocalypse (PDF), The Believer, December 2003.
Not-So-Public Relations: How the drug industry is branding itself with bioethics, Slate, December 15, 2003.
Humanity 2.0 (PDF), Wilson Quarterly, Autumn 2003.
Costing an Arm and a Leg: The victims of a growing mental disorder are obsessed with amputation, Slate, July 10, 2003
American Bioscience Meets the American Dream, The American Prospect, vol. 14 no. 6, June 1, 2003.
Medicate Your Dissent, Speakeasy, May/June, 2003.
Logical Extreme: The next step for "reality" television, The American Prospect Online, May 13, 2003.
Adventures in the Gene Pool(PDF), Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2003.
Attitudes, Souls and Persons: Children with Severe Neurological Impairment(PDF), Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews 9: 16-20 (2003)
Identity and Genetic Ancestry Training, (with Paul Brodwin), British Medical Journal, 2002;325:1469-1471 ( 21 December 2002 ).
Pharma Buys a Conscience, The American Prospect vol. 12 no. 17, September 24, 2001 - October 8, 2001.
Throwing a Bone to the Watchdog(PDF), Hastings Center Report, March-April 2001.
A New Way to Be Mad? The Atlantic Monthly 283:6, December 2000, pp. 72-84.
Pursued by Happiness and Beaten Senseless: Prozac and The American Dream(PDF), Hastings Center Report, March-April 2000.
How To Be An Academic Failure: A Guide for Beginners, The Ruminator Review, Winter 2000, pp. 15-16.